The Hour Before Dawn
by crimewaves
Summary: A space of empty time just before the day after Skulduggery was ripped into the Faceless Ones dimension. Valkyrie's reaction. Oneshot.


Disclaimer- I have yet to trick Derek Landy into hadning the royalties of the Skulduggery Pleasant series to me. Until then...it isn't mine.

Summary: A space of empty time just before the day after Skulduggery was ripped into the Faceless Ones dimension. Valkyrie's reaction. Oneshot.

Basically, the night after Skulduggery was taken in the Faceless Ones. It was left unexplored, so I tried to fill in a bit of it with some attempted angst, attempted humour and a dream sequence that may be symbolic, or maybe just plain weird. I like to think it turned out okay.

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**The Hour Before Dawn**

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**T**he first thing Valkyrie had done when China and Ghastly had dropped her off at the edge of Haggard was sprint through the back ways, through the muddy fields and alleyways, before climbing up into her bedroom, flying up the walls and slipping through the window almost frantically. There was no reflection waiting for her, and that fact alone had almost made her break down where she stood. She managed though, she shuddered and managed. Quickly, she searched the floor, looking for a strip of gleaming black. It was dumped in the corner behind the door, ready for the bin. Her old working clothes. Her first working clothes, the all black ones. She grabbed them, and turned to go downstairs, but found she couldn't bear to disturb the empty silence in the hallway. She ran back the way she came, scrambling out of the window and landing too heavily.

Valkyrie ran faster than she thought she was capable of, tearing through the streets with the words "He's gone. He's gone. He's gone." Echoing in her head over and over, making her want to scream in grief or rage or powerlessness. She found herself where she wanted to be within seconds (or minutes or perhaps even hours... she couldn't tell anymore.) It didn't matter- he was gone.

Skulduggery was... was he dead now? The last Faceless One had took him; they had fought and won the battle, and its tentacle had slipped back, grabbed Skulduggery's ankle and he hadn't had time to scream. Valkyrie hoped he hadn't screamed afterwards, hoped it had been quick, and then she screamed, right in the middle of the road, pulling at her hair and insisting to herself that he couldn't be dead, he was the Skeleton Detective. Skeletons didn't die, not ever. She ran down the road to the Edgeley Estate as fast as the wind.

She still thought of it as her Uncle's house. His personality was painted on the walls, sank deeply into the bricks, and she fled there now. It was where it had started, in a way. True, for her it would always have started by a graveside, but this place was pretty important too. It was where she'd had her first real fight, her first victory. She'd almost died here, just hours ago, and back then as well. Those caves... they were hers. And that foyer had had Skulduggery stand there too many times for him not to be there, in some small ghostly way. She leapt straight to the top of the gate, not even manipulating the air, and slipped to the other side, hesitating a moment before dropping. She gasped at the impact, and jogged towards the front door with subdued limbs.

The front door. Now she saw it she had the almost overwhelming urge to break it open. That's what Skulduggery had done, when he had rescued her, the first time. She didn't smash it open, because her eyes were blurring and all she could feel was her blood pulsing under her skin, and the wind wasn't anywhere, it seemed like all the air in the world had gotten sucked away and it was amazing that she was still running, really. She half wanted to make a dry quip at the thought, to alleviate the non-existent fear, but then she remembered that it wouldn't be quite as effective if Skulduggery wasn't there to point out that talking to herself was the first sign of madness, and maybe threaten to lock her in the car next battle, to save her sanity. It wouldn't happen now, and she couldn't laugh without it sounding ragged and hollow and desperate, so she awkwardly searched for the spare key (that was glued to the inside of the empty bell outside the door- Skulduggery's 'genius' idea...) and let herself inside.

Although she hadn't realised it as she had fled down the garden path, outside the wind was howling, and pushing against the walls. The world outside looked very grey, and drab, and it was so different standing inside what had been one of her hideouts since she was five years old and realised that Gordon was mentally young enough to play fort with her, or be the dragon that she beat the crap out of to rescue some teddy bear she had been abusing for some time, anyway. A violent child was young Stephanie Edgeley, but Gordon took it all on the chin.

On instinct only, Valkyrie started sprinting again, this time disturbing the dust on the floors with her footfalls, remembering back to that time, years ago, when she was wasn't as old as she was now, or as jaded as she was now, when she had just one name. It was a game her and Gordon used to have, the whole reason there was a bell at the front door, as well as a normal doorbell that you pressed a button to use. The game was that only Stephanie was allowed to use the 'olden' bell, and then she would let herself in. That's when the game started: she would dash through the halls as fast as she could, and find a good hiding place on the lower floor. After the forty seconds were up, Gordon (and sometimes her parents, because a pack of trolls were as a rule more intimidating than just one troll) would come thundering down the stairs, and start searching for her. Hide and seek, although Valkyrie doubted that other children would kick out at the finder if the finder was in a cunning mood, and felt like startling her. Again, Gordon gladly took it all on the chin, and that might be why Valkyrie had no problems with lashing out at bad guys who tried to hurt people years later. Well, Valkyrie felt quite justified in that they were bad guys, although she wondered for moment, when she leaned against a wall, gasping for breath before she started moving again, if she had killed Billy Ray Sanguine. Whether or not it was the right thing to do at the time, attempted murder or not. Then she remembered how the idiot had helped let the Faceless Ones out, stole Skulduggery for a quick buck, and she silently snarled and felt a flash of rage that might have been have had something to do with the mysterious cracking noise down the hall. She couldn't tell because her powers weren't supposed work when she was angry or sad. She was both.

The hallways seemed to melt into one another, reminding her of the house beneath Gordon's house, of Anathem Mire and Black Crystals and giant bugs. It made the burn in her lungs intensify, that fire that as good as gave her the ability to fly, she could run so far and fast with it with burning through her like her pulsing blood. She raced it through the house, breaking the flow of it only when she arrived someplace that she wasn't sure felt right.

Once she stopped outside of Gordon's study, skidded to a stop before she turned and ran away, memories of a man with a scarf and a hat speaking to her in there rushing through her head, and he had had a velvety voice that was undeniably fascinating, like an old fashioned detectives' was supposed to be like, she'd always imagined. More errant memories flurried past: paper people, swarming the house, her first proper confrontation, when she had pushed one out of the window and watched helplessly as her new acquaintance-friend-skeleton-thing (Skulduggery...) had been carried away. She'd rescued him then, and thought _what if she couldn't now?_ The thought hurt.

Tears stung her eyes and she felt like she'd been punched in the ribs. Again she faltered as she found herself before the entrance to the caves. The first expedition down there: her and Skulduggery (well, mainly Skulduggery) solving her first sort of mystery. The creatures down there, the blood black walls, the snappy and amusing comments.

_What's that? _

_Why, Valkyrie, that is what we would call a monster._

_You don't know what it is, do you?_

_Yes, I do. It's a big scary monster, now be quiet before it comes over here and eats us! _

Once more, the memories tugged at her insides, and she had to put a hand on her mouth to stop herself sobbing or retching; she couldn't be sure which one- possibly both. She was sprinting again in seconds, almost on choking on the dust in the air and her dripping tears now.

Somehow, she found herself in the living room. She barely registered herself pulling out a familiar blanket. She didn't realise she had leapt onto the sofa until she had crawled under the suffocating woolly blanket, curled up into a ball and started crying into her hair and the sofa cushions. The sound of sobs was awful- they played out like a cracked record, and the wails sounded like an animal left alone and broken in the middle of the road, crying out for its family, for help, for anything but the pool of blood in the middle of the desolate dirt track, trying not to die quietly as it feels the fractures running through its bones.

Bones...

She was sure she was splintering like a mirror, her eyes glassy and tearful and ready to shatter into a dozen sharp pieces any second. Her finger bones shook and almost buckled, she was gripping the blanket so hard. There was blood in her mouth from where she had bitten her tongue and lip trying to be strong and quieten down, even if it hurt. She finally fell asleep with a headache pounding between her temples, and her grief shivering and sobbing in her chest.

)(~)(

Dreaming was strange. It was so for a variety of reasons. Firstly, Valkyrie hadn't had a dream that hadn't been a nightmare since forever. Secondly, the nightmares were usually just flickers she had no control over, those shadows clinging to the ground just before dawn. Thirdly, she had never had a dream quite so shifting and peaceful and strange.

She dreamt of lots of things, and not one emotion lit in her slumbering mind. She dreamt of walking down the hallways of the Edgeley Estate, with Skulduggery, and he was having a rather one sided conversation with her. She was alternating between grinning and frowning, and kept chiding him because he was being really loud when they were searching for something, and they had to be quiet. Even in the dream she had thought that she wouldn't change anything for the world.

Then Gordon's voice had echoed through the hall, and she remembered that they were playing hide and seek with Gordon. She grabbed Skulduggery's gloved hand, and they ran together, looking for a mutual hiding place. The first spot they picked was a wardrobe, and China was hiding in there. The next spot was occupied by Sanguine, who flashed her a toothy grin with speckles of blood at the corners of his mouth. Tanith was hiding underneath the desk (she winked and smiled and said "Sorry, Val") and Fletcher was crouched behind the door ("Because I have_ the _best hair") and the Diablerie were huddled in one room looking for hiding places, and had turned and waved guns at them when they came in, so they had walked off and kept looking.

That's how most of the game went. They continually found odd people crouched in the best hiding places (Vaurien Scapegrace hiding in the loo under the stairs, Ghastly under a bed, Baron Vengeous in a bathtub, Serpine trying to corral the hollow men into the correct places in the pantry, Solomon Wreath laughing at them from a shadow in the hall), and after a while they hid in the room where the entrance to the caves was, the two of them covering themselves in coats and hats, standing beside a hat stand and trying to blend in.

It wasn't the most ingenious place, and Skulduggery kept poking her and making her laugh. That's when Gordon came thumping down the stairs, and Valkyrie was suddenly surprised, because Uncle Gordon wasn't really the size of the Grostequery, was he? She slid back, going to lean against Skulduggery for support but he wasn't there, so she fell backwards and kept falling and seemed to slip straight through the walls. All of a sudden she was the Not-House, hidden in the cave, and Mire was there, waving Skulduggery's hat in her face and saying _I have him now, girl_... and cackling like a villain from an old superhero movie. That's when she heard Skulduggery. He was outside the Not-House, and he was yelling for her. Yelling_ Valkyrie, Valkyrie, you have to help me! _She felt so helpless then, and Mire was petting her hair, and then it changed. The Sceptre of the Ancients glowed as she clenched her fists around it, and the house fell apart in a blaze of dark light.

The black lightning glanced off the cave walls, bouncing around her in a corona of strange, glowing not-light, and she ran again, shouting for her skeletal friend. Where was he? Occasionally she heard a velvety gasp or sob or scream, but she didn't stop to feel the air. She just followed the echoes. Monsters leapt out from nooks and crannies, and she tossed flames and shadows at them to make them stop.

Abruptly, the ground disappeared under her feet, and the sceptre tangled in some vines. She kept her grip, swinging slightly and praying that the vines held, scrabbling for a grip of the ropey strands. She had just managed to entangle herself in the tendrils, and that's when she heard the sound of the fight. She twisted and thrashed madly, then she calmed, flicked her wrist. The vines obeyed her like the shadows from Solomon Wreath's cane. She rotated until she was facing the outcrop, the same outcrop she had fell off the first time she had ventured down into the- oh no. She looked up with mounting dread, and recognised the arms of the plant monster that had once tried to eat her. _Oh no no no no** no...**_

The sounds of a fight still came from the ledge, and all thoughts of her own situation were washed out of her head as she recognised the familiar figure of Skulduggery fighting off three Faceless Ones all on his own. He was losing- his bones were cracking one by one, and his hat was swept off his skull, drifting down the abyss beneath her feet, the sight of it falling echoing how it had feel off his head mid-battle at Aranmore Farm...

He was going to die! She struggled with the vines, grappling, trying to free herself so she could help. Wait- the Sceptre! She had the Sceptre! She could use it to obliterate the vines and rescue Skulduggery. She searched blindly, and her eyes lit on the golden metal, only to watch in disbelief as it dropped away from her, twisting and smashing as it fell. She fought harder than ever, kicking against the vines. She screamed, and Skulduggery looked up, distracted. His jaw worked to tell her something, anything, and that was when the Faceless One hit him, knocked his skull clean off his shoulders. He toppled slowly into the blackness, and she was being yanked up by the vines, her hands still reaching out for her friend. Then she pulled across the vine covered floor and into its mouth, and as soon as she was on the other side it looked like the portal, disappearing rapidly with Skulduggery inside.

That's when she woke up. Well, she_ thought _she did. She sat up slowly in bed, looking around the dark living room of Gordon's house. There was a shadow outside of the window, and it was wearing a familiar hat. She smiled, fell back for a moment, the couch cushions pressing against her back and her hand on her burning forehead.

"Knock, knock." That was Skulduggery outside, being a goon. She was glad to have him back. She tiptoed to the door, careful not to wake up Gordon, and started unlatching the door. Then Skulduggery spoke from the other side of the door, making her halt.

"Valkyrie, you _know_ I'm gone, don't you?"

"Pardon?" Valkyrie was confused now, and upset. Something important rippled at the edge of her mind, and it felt like her brain was rupturing. She didn't want to remember.

"I'm not really here, you know. I'm actually somewhere quite different. Another dimension, in fact. I think it might be Hell. That's my affectionate nickname for it, at least. The Faceless Ones are here with me. They want you, too."

Valkyrie swallowed down what felt like tightly packed dread in her throat, and said:

"That sounds distressing."

"It is," Skulduggery replied. "Are you going to help me?"

"I'd do anything to get you back."

"So you do remember then. In that case Valkyrie, I'll be waiting for you. We have to go to the Sanctuary and get reinstated, so we can save the world and look snappy and what not." At that the shadow of a skeletal figure dressed in a suit started receding, strolling leisurely down the path, whistling and playing with its hat.

"But wait...Skulduggery, wait..." He didn't hear her, and Valkyrie watched as tentacles rose from the path and wrapped themselves around his arms and legs. They dragged him under the ground, leaving Valkyrie trying to stop the tears from pouring down her face (because Skulduggery was shocked, when she had cried the other day) and trying to stop all the questions from clanging loudly inside of her mind, clashing and banging together and echoing and _singing_ like the sceptre when enemies were near.

_Where was Skulduggery_? He couldn't be gone, not now, not when he wasn't supposed to die...

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Valkyrie woke up for real this time, gasping and sobbing and feeling cold snot and drying tears on her face. She pottered as quickly as she could towards the downstairs bathroom, to wipe away the dirt and the evidence of crying. The house was cold as it was on her first sleepover, and the chill wrapped around her feet. She didn't grumble like she usually would; she was just to numb to notice anything. She felt so tired and colourless, like she'd wept out everything that made her who she was, washed out all the smart comments and scowls and frowns and cheeky questions with one big sob fest.

She couldn't look for long at the girl in the mirror, because she didn't look like herself. She looked too much like Stephanie, boring, normal Stephanie, who didn't have cool magical clothes or a talking skeleton detective for a best friend, or all the weight of the world breaking her shoulders. The face was pink and blotchy and tired, the hair was grizzled, sticking to the side of her face. The eyes weren't as dark and lively as they were a day ago, the green looking like broken glass. She walked off before the sight of it really hit her hard.

She wandered for a while, unsure what to do. Skulduggery's absence ached, even now, and she barely felt anything, just the occasional wisp of wind as it drifted by. She went into the study briefly, hand lingering over the book that opened the secret room, but she wasn't up to conversation. She traipsed downstairs, looking for something with no concrete reason as for why, stopping to rest against walls for minutes at a time. She kept expecting ghosts to round around the corners; to smile and make a cheerful comment, but nothing stirred except the dust.

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She broke out of her catatonia at around day break, when she tripped over her old working clothes. They had been discarded in the middle of the floor, the creeping white light picking out the gleam of black fabric as she sprawled and just lay there, staring absently. Time revolved slowly, and the gears in her head started to click into place. Valkyrie crawled towards the clothes, picking them up slowly, reverently. Then she scooped them up and jumped to her feet, the suddenness of it painful to her cold feet. Nevermind. She had something brighter than the grey in her head, and she was clinging to it.

She stripped off her clothes in the living room, dropping them messily on the couch and floor. In their stead she squeezed herself into her old clothes. They didn't fit, squashing her into a tense shape and digging into her when she moved. She looked at the mirror (Gordon had been inordinately –albeit predictably- fascinated by his reflection, and there were many hanging around the house) and saw an older girl pretending to be a child. She snarled again, to cover up the wish that she could be young again, because if she went back in time, maybe Skulduggery would break open that door again...

No, _no_, stupid thoughts. Wishes don't get you anywhere. Valkyrie scowled at her reflection (who scowled back, and she was glad she looked almost like herself again) and whipped her gaze away, turning around. The clothes pressed into her skin painfully, so she pulled them off, undressing again. The new clothes that she had got just this battle looked forlornly up at her from the floor, so she picked them up and put them on. They fit just like her old clothes used to, and although they weren't those clothes, and they hadn't seen all the fights those old clothes had seen, maybe it really was the fit that mattered. Besides, the red sleeves looked cool.

This time when she looked in the mirror it was definitely Valkyrie Cain who glared back. Tendrils of wet hair so dark they had turned black drifted in front of her eyes, framing the slight smirk that played around her lips. The eyebrows were sharp and mocking, and her face was white as a sheet. She wasn't quite back to normal. The mouth was too pale, contrasting with the faint smear of blood from when she had bit her lip in the night. The flesh on the cheekbones seemed to hang gauntly, the face a paler shade than it should be and her eyes were truly different- they were a little bit bloodshot, and the pink tinge contrasted with the green, making the irises appear almost luminous in comparison. The look of them was too open and earnest, and she missed the spark of laughter in them already.

There was still a great big gaping hole where her stomach used to be, and her eyes were a little too empty and the wails were banging against the inside of her throat so hard it hurt... but she would be okay. Well, not okay, but okay enough. She had to be fierce and strong and clever again if she wanted to save her best friend, and before the mirror she swore she would. She stared into her own eyes and promised that she would do anything in her power to rescue him, like he had the first night she had slept in this house.

Valkyrie closed her weary eyes, and breathed the dust in deeply, smelt the memories and tasted the fading laughter. It was sunrise, and she imagined the red gold disk moving higher in the sky, wondered if somewhere a sun was rising for Skulduggery too. She wondered if he was thinking of her. She wondered if he was _alive_. Then she gritted her teeth, swore that he was and that she would find him, before swiftly moving towards the kitchen, where she would make a cup of tea and plan for the day.

They were terrible with plans, always had been, and if she was honest this one was no better. It consisted of vague possibilities- she had to return the Bentley to Cemetery Road; she had to visit Kenspeckle to check on Tanith. She would track down Fletcher and make sure he had a place to stay; she would track down Jaron Gallow because he was in charge of the portal, so if anyone had answers, he did. She would retrieve Skulduggery's revolver and keep it polished and loaded until he got back, and she'd find out if she killed Sanguine.

Above all, she would rescue Skulduggery, no matter what, because that's what partners did: they rescued one another. Valkyrie Cain shook off the daylight swirling around her legs with a heavy heart and a resolute mind and absolutely no idea where to start looking. The cup of tea was warm between her fingers and she gazed at the shifting liquid, mesmerized. Tea, she decided, was a morale booster, and that made it an excellent place to start. She sipped the drink, and she almost smiled. Not quite, not yet, but then again, sometimes it starts with the smallest things, like a conversation in a study or a glance over a graveyard. Or maybe even a strange dream in the middle of the night.

It didn't matter, really. What did matter was that she was alive and kicking and sparking with dull ideas about how to get her best friend back. The cup of tea was a nice bonus, too, and she was sure that Echo Gordon wasn't the size of a troll and would actually be pretty helpful, all things considered.

It wasn't much. But it was a start.

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AN- Yes it is pretty optimistic isn't it, when you consider how pessimistic Valkyrie was when she met up with Solomon. I wasn't too happy with that, but I think it was just the right tone for the end of it, and all her hope could have been washed out of her over the next few weeks anyway. She's a pessimist by nature, and Ghastly and Tanith seem to feel that she's a sister and they have to look after her. They would probably try to bring her to earth, and then she's be depressed all over again. Actually, nobody but Solomon seems to be particularly optimistic afterwards, so that would probably account for a lot. Plus, she wasn't really upset in the last chapter until Skulduggery was brought up, so she possibly tried to chase down a few leads and was feeling hopeless. Well, that's my excuse anyway.

I tried to sort of mimic Landy's style of writing for this-the tone of it. I'm not sure if I did it okay, but I think it was a good try. The dream sequence is longer than I thought it'd be, but I enjoy dream sequences, and I wrote this with no plan in mind. Just a nagging idea that would not go away. So, tell me what you think!


End file.
